centraltrains

iirc last time there were WMR/Avanti strikes on TfW services were curtailed at Wolverhampton - so may want to have a backup plan just in case.

With regards to parking charges... Cheeky thought/question... World Duty Free sale/show is on the same weekend which has free entry & parking with a valid recipt, has anyone been to this event/know how much typical cheaper items cost/if it's less than £12.85?

Would anyone have any recommendations for lubricants to lessen the wheel squeak on these?

Rails of Sheffield are running an additional 5% off most in stock items again over the bank holiday weekend. https://railsofsheffield.com/blogs/news/additional-5-discount-2 It's valid on some of the already discounted Class 150s, meaning you can pick them up for around £225-250 (depending on livery), which was enough of a discount for me to get round to ordering a Northern 150/1!

Rapido website (by filling up basket to max quantity) reports 60 Blue/Grey and 50 Swallow's left in stock. Rails/Hattons/Kernow show a respective total of 14 and 21 in stock. ~35% remaining. Will be interesting to see if Hornby sell out quicker.

I emailed Bachmann with a similar reply last year and the reply I received was:

I look forward to seeing restored hybrid 170 + 350 combinations running!! https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/275285546608 from the same seller: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/275285548273 Wonder what they've been through to get in that condition?

Northern 150/1! That's something that's been missing for quite awhile, will probabbly end up buying... Would still love to see a London Midland liveried 150!

Sorry if my wondering wasn't clear, I meant the fact it is a club exclusive, might be the reasoning for the reduction in price compared to last years Class 90s.

It's interesting that the RRP on the class 90 has dropped £20. Current ones being £109.99, the Malcolm one being £89.99 on that picture or £84.98 on the Hornby website. Why can this loco be dropped in price but not anything else in the range? (At a guess - because it's a club exclusive, maybe they've dropping the margin shops would otherwise make?)

TPE 802 showing as unavailable right now, does this usually mean sold out?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/353837778846 "Central Trains" - the perfect title for this ScotRail 153. The description goes onto to give more context "Rederedelivered in to Hornby Loco R30011 ScotRail".

Have any further liveries been done since the original Freightliner and BR Rail Freight & Intercity ones?

Does anyone know what type of decoders come with the after-market pre-set-up pair (https://railsofsheffield.com/products/legomanbiffo-cl156dec-class-156-dcc-decoders-suitable-for-the-realtrack-class-156-2-pack)? Been trying to hook a 156 up to the Bachmann 158 for some quite time by trying to 3D print some attachment for the 158 (all attempts failed), but luckily the new 150s come with the new BSI coupler, which works wonderfully with the 156! Need to tune the CVs, surprised they work without derailing untuned (first for me so a pleasant surprise).

There is one but it is incredibly rare https://www.videoscene.co.uk/flexity-model

Which shops are these? None of my usuals seem to be showing in stock for the GWR or Northern ones. (Think the provincial one has been out for about 6 weeks?)

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/124766898164?hash=item1d0cafc7f4:g:MJwAAOSwpgZgwknO A never-ran DCC Fitted model which will have been hard wired to be DCC Fitted.... must be arrogantly confident soldering.

Around 2004 according to Google Ngram https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=staycation&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cstaycation%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Cstaycation%3B%2Cc0

They were featured in the Rails email sent on 18th May "Bachmann OO Releases"

I made a subject access request to eBay a couple of years ago... They had a huge list logging every URL including search & item I have ever been clicked since signing up. Think eBay certainly are into the data mining/machine learning for product recommendations. Plus side was that they hadn't come up with a digital way of replying to SARs back then so I got a free USB stick with the data on it.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/133773788864 People seem to overprice the FGW 150/2s quite consistency given they're still in stock new. https://www.kernowmodelrailcentre.com/p/58206/32-935X-Bachmann-Class-150-2-2-Car-DMU-number-150-216

Interesting that Modelcraft items are listed... Do Hornby own Modelcraft or are they perhaps looking to expand as a general online model shop? ETA: Oh they're a Hornby Collectors Club exclusives... which is a bit of an unusual exclusivity term given Modelcraft products are available from other retailers.

I thought it was the case that they were going to retool it as per the class 158? That's when new liveries such as the Chiltern 168 were announced, still seem to be available to pre-order at some shops. https://www.derails.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=939

Does anyone know if Bachmann are still going ahead with this? Searched their website just out of interest and couldn't find it listed anymore.

It's January, the Hornby R7338 maglight has not been released. I'm very eager to play with the Maglight system so wanted to get ahead of the game, with the 4 Wheel Coach being quickly released, I purchased one in a beautiful GNR livery (R40104A), in order to test out what I might be able to do with the maglight system. Taking the coach out the box, reveals there is a pull tag to enable the lights, however when I tired to pull it out - the whole chassis came off! At least that works out how to get inside. This revealed that the battery is located below the seating area - and it turns out this is a good job, and rather essential - CR2032 batteries are magnetic, and otherwise the magnet would be attracted, ot stick to the roof. Taking the seating out reveals the lighting attached to the top - screwed in complete on a singlar strip - very different to the images shown for R7338 which has a board attaches to another board of LEDs. R7338 isn't out yet, but given it is only sold as being used to convert an existing coach, I'm rather surprised and a bit confused to why they've gone to the effort of designing it differently. Speculating - maybe they're pretty keen on expanding the Maglight range to more coaches, and having a seperate control board will allow for easier implementation down the line. I ordered a wheel of 5V LEDs. After doing some reading on these forums about pre-existing latching reed switch solutions, mainly sold by layouts4u, although they run from a 3V battery, as 3V SMD LEDs are uncommon/expensive compared to 5V ones, it is adequate to run 5V LEDs undervolted on a 3V supply. I went about tracing the circuit board to work out where to attach my lights to, and drew out a diagram of the wiring configuration of the board. I found that the tail of Q1 contains a negative lead to the LEDs and I can take a lead after R2 for the positive. I'm not brilliant with knowledge of electronics, but I think given the LEDs have individual resistors, R2 may be a bit redundant, but maybe it's some sort of protection from inverse insertion? I'm not really sure - either way I decided to play safe and take from the same place as the pre-existing LEDs. I also noticed there were rather a lot of redundant traces where it looks like SMD components should be mounted but aren't. As seen, this worked, horrah! But after looking at the circuit board, it seemed rather oversized for the space it was going to fit, I decided I should attempt to cut it down. I identified I could chop it down next to the soldering plates as they were just blank placed where SMD components could go up to there, and after Q2 as this was just pre-built LEDs. Of course, for the modification to the left end, I needed to take out the reed switch, and relocate it. I also took this opportunity to snip off the LEDs on the other side of the board. This worked for the first end, and then I forgot to take photos of the process for the second end, either way I ended up with this layout for the maglight inside the coach, some of you may be able to foreshadow what is about to happen. I re-wired the connection to the battery though the seating area and into the weight box on the coach (with the help of a drill), as to mimic Hornby in getting it away from the area the magnet will be used. I used cheap insulating tape over the magnets to make sure the weights did not lead to any conduction, and added a plug to allow easy separation of the seating to the base - however with hindsight, this may be a bit pointless in hinsite, as it comes out with the seats anyway. It may be more useful from the seats to the roof, but would create additional challenges in hiding the wires. A diagram of the complete board modification below. At this point I thought I was done, so I went to put the seating back in... and... crunch.... eh-oh. I managed to break the reed switch.... So off on eBay I have gone to order some reed switches, and hopefully I will be able to repair it. Perhaps this reveals (speculative) reasoning behind the seperate board, idiots like me not thinking about the seating before closing up a chassis, I would be surprised if Hornby were not expect people use the R7338 lighting on other coaches, and by making a dedicated board, where the switch is at the end - it perhaps is designed to force the installer to think to place the reed switch parallel to the gangway and avoid the crunch which otherwise may happen. I will post a follow-up post when/if I manage to get it working. On a final note, I will note, that at least with my unit, the reed switch magnet operation is not as reliable as one would like. It took many attempts to to pass the magnet over before it would switch between on/off states, I found waving it in a circle above the switch would reliably toggle it within about 20 seconds, about 80% of the time. This makes it hard to see how Mr. Kohler imagines people may hide a magnet inside a bridge to cause activation (as per the press launch video seen on this forum). The only guaranteed method was accidently shorting the magnet over the switch for an instant toggle. I did notice during soldering, that it got easier to toggle - maybe the heat of the iron loosened it a bit? I was going to take a video to demonstrate this, but sadly I've broken it, and it wouldn't be a fair comparison to do it on replacement components. I hope you've explored my initial explore into the world of Hornby Maglight, I'd be interested to know if others are as excited about maglight as me, or if any other lighting technologies are preferred by others.